Antietam was formed more than a quarter-century ago, a New York City first-wave indie band that rose from the ashes of Louisville, Kentucky’s Babylon Dance Band. Lead by the incendiary Les Paul guitar of Tara Key, for 20 years the group has operated as a trio, with Key’s husband Tim Harris on bass, and drummer Josh Madell. Across eight studio albums they have chiseled a sound that once was loose, chaotic, and sprawling into a fiercely focused rock ‘n’ roll maelstrom — harnessing the power of Key’s guitar and her primal singing into their own version of pop music.

Antietam - Tenth LifePhoto by Tara Key

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Released on May 10, 2011, Antietam’s eighth studio album, Tenth Life is the culmination of a creative arc the group has followed for the last quarter-century. On 2008’s epic 2-CD, 3-LP Opus Mixtum, the band spread their wings and unleashed not just their patented guitar-heavy bombast, with Tara Key’s explosive Les Paul and emotive vocals taking the power trio through their paces, but also a more subdued, freewheeling set of instrumental explorations. This time out, the band set their sights on a pop target, making Tenth Life Antietam’s most focused, song-driven album to date.

Tara Key has explored a mellower side on a pair of critically-acclaimed “solo” albums in the mid-’90s, and more recently on a pair of lush and loopy ambient guitar collaborations with Eleventh Dream Day’s Rick Rizzo, the most recent, Double Star, just out on Thrill Jockey. But Antietam is her life’s work, and the fierce, soaring rock this trio delivers is a message from Key’s heart, blending her Kentucky roots with her New York tenure in a fiery worldview that knows no provenance.

Tenth Life finds Antietam channeling their power into a set of ten hard-driving songs that deliver with a concise impact. Lyrically, there is a thread running throughout, exploring both the pursuit of artistic vitality and the commitment to an inspired, meaningful life, creative or otherwise, from the dle to the grave. Nine lives may be ok for cats, but Antietam is painfully human, and this is their Tenth Life.

When we chose the name Antietam for our band over 20 years ago, we never
realized how often
it would be mispronounced, misspelled, misunderstood, or just met with befuddled
stares of
“Huh?” In naming our band after the bloodiest day in American
history, we didn’t think we were
being obscure, but we proceeded to see Antietam billed as Antidam, Antetam,
Antietem,
Anteetam, Antitam, or even as Auntie Em.

Imagine opening the paper or pulling
up to a marquee
and finding your bloody band name changed into the lovely auntie in The Wizard
of Oz.
In the Civil War, Union troops named battles after the nearest body of water
like Antietam Creek;
Confederate troops used the nearest town, making Antietam the Battle of Sharpsburg
in the
South. Only the astute D. Boon of the Minutemen and Tara’s dad pointed
out the irony of
southerners calling themselves Antietam.

We just have to admit it: Antietam is a weird band. There’s nobody
really like us.

It doesn’t help that our influences range from Neil Young, the Clash,
the Stooges, Dead Moon,
Eno and the Raiders to Chinese Opera, John Ruskin, Albert Pinkham Ryder, action
painting,
hitting the “sweet spot” in multiple sports, and the childhood
game of 4-square. Yeah, two of us
are down home folks from Kentucky...but Tara once won a David Bowie look-alike
contest in
New York City in the Year of the Diamond Dogs. Say what? Yes, we have a picture
to prove it.
One reviewer of Victory Park said the remarkable thing about Antietam was
that we didn’t show
any evidence of any influences. And we rather enjoyed that.

Our last work, Opus Mixtum, represented a departure for us, seventeen years
into the lineup of Tara Key on guitar, Josh Madell on drums, and Tim Harris
on bass. It was our first double CD and we are excited by Carrot Top’s
dedication to total sound quality with the release of a triple vinyl LP edition.
But beyond quantity and quality, it our vision that has expanded on Opus Mixtum.

The title comes from a method of laying brick in ancient Rome that combined
rectangular and
diagonal patterns, but we use it to connote the mix of three styles: Antietam
rock, the acoustic
pop of Tara Key solo releases, and the instrumental soundtracks of our lives.

Antietam has always been noted for Tara’s pyrotechnics on electric
guitar. In 1980, The Village
Voice called Tara “the best female guitarist this side of the Atlantic.”
In 2005, the Voice left out
the gender thing and said, “Did I mention that Tara Key is the best
guitarist in the world?” Tara’s
style and the energy of the Antietam live show have defined the character
of our albums over the
years – from the 80s lineup with two bass guitars on Antietam and Music
from Elba to the leaner
early 90s stylings of Burgoo and Everywhere Outside to the three-piece power
rock of our live
album from CBGBs, then Rope-a-Dope and 2004’s Victory Park.

We all explored life outside of Antietam at points as well, and these extracurriculars
have a lot to
do with the variety on this album: from Tara’s two well-received “solo”
albums released on
Homestead in the mid-90’s (neither album was solo by any stretch of
the imagination, and both
Tim and Josh figured prominently, but these records allowed Tara to explore
a more acoustic,
songwriterly approach to her craft, with a coterie of sidemen on strings and
keys and horns), to
her instrumental collaboration with Rick Rizzo of Chicago stalwarts Eleventh
Dream Day
(resulting in the Dark Edson Tiger album released in 2000 on Thrill Jockey),
to Tim’s “lead cello”
work with local psychedelic pop band The Special Pillow, to Josh’s songwriting
(and drumming)
for pop-punk girl group Tralala.

As snatches of melodies from these projects showed up on soundtracks as varied
as the kids’
show Pete and Pete on Nickelodeon, the NPR radio show This American Life,
and the soundtrack
for a campaign to build a memorial at the WTC site, we wanted to expand the
moods, or the
modes, on our Antietam records. Why show only one side of ourselves in our
band?

After recording Victory Park in a beach house, this time we stayed home and
turned to hotshot
producer (and now auxiliary live band member) Josh Clark at Seaside Lounge
in Brooklyn, to
wrestle with Tara’s signature sound like a line of discerning producers
before him (Wharton
Tiers, John Siket, Jon Williams, James Murphy, Ira and Georgia from Yo La
Tengo, Tara Jane
O’Neil). We were impressed at all the vinyl in twenty-something Clark’s
record collection. He did
such a bang-up job of recording our three-piece rock-outs, that we enlisted
him to help stitch the
instrumentals and lush acoustics into the Opus Mixtum quilt as well.

Then we pieced in Mark Howell’s horns, Katie Gentile’s violins,
and Rick Rizzo on stunt guitar.
The album flows effortlessly through its varying moods, instrumental passages
disappearing
into hooky pop, Tara’s defining guitar being enveloped by Hammond organ
or a lush string
passage before the pounding rock and roll of the classic trio punches through.
So you get pop
with “Turn It on Me,” rock with “Pennants and Flags,”
and just pure melody with “March Echo”
and “Steel G.” As they say in Louisville, if you don’t like
the weather, wait ten minutes.

And, of course, when in doubt, turn it up loud!

AND... 1) Name Calling
So judging by your name, you must be, like, Americana, or roots-rock?

Well, Tim’s Dad did fiddle on the Grand Ole Opry at the age of twelve.
And Tara’s name does sound like the Cherokee part of her blood.
And Josh loves the Louvin Brothers.
We love our Hank and our Dolly, but we don’t wear it on our sleeves.

And while we never viewed our audience as cannon fodder, we have always felt
that everyone
could use a little dose of Antietam. After all, it was the Civil War battle
that stands as the
bloodiest day in American history, the catastrophic moment in the cornfields
of suburban
Maryland when things got so bad that never again would spectators bring picnics
to Civil War
battles; when America lost its innocence forever; when the “land of
the free” needed major
qualification; when the combatants knew finally that this war had to be fought
to the finish over
one issue – slavery. A few days later, Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation. It was a
day of reckoning.

And at the time, it seemed like a good name for a band.

2) Instant History
Tim and Tara played in the Babylon Dance Band (1978-????) in Louisville before
moving to
NYC and starting Antietam on Derby Day 1984. That Kentucky scene then begat
Your Food,
Squirrel Bait, Slint, Rodan, Will Oldham, My Morning Jacket. No problem, T
and T will cop to
being the grandparents of this scene. And for the record, New Yorker and honorary
Louisvillian
Josh is a lot younger.